Sticks and Stars

I had good luck at the consignment shop yesterday. One pristine pair of jeans, size 6, one pristine pair of overalls, size 5 but way big for a 5, another pair of jeans that won’t fit him for another year, but hey, strike while the iron is hot, one pair of cargo pants, supposedly size 7 but just right for my five year old (maybe they are supposed to be cropped?), a very nice winter coat that’s only a little too big, two pairs of shoes that won’t fit him for a while yet but look brand new in the meantime, and a couple of other items. I think getting there first thing in the morning is key because the store was more crowded than I’ve ever seen it but there were actually jeans! I’m still going to patch some of his jeans though. I read some instructions for making clever use of those (hideous!) iron-on denim patches and I think I can pull it off so that the patches look cute and maybe even intentional.

Unrelated but funny: on our drive to the consignment shop my five year old saw the spires of a church sticking up above the trees. He said, “Hey Mom! Look, there’s a castle!…And it has a T on top of it!!…A T for time-out!!…A time-out castle?? Why do we need a time-out castle??”

And in other non-castle, non time-out, non-clothes-shopping news, I’ve been lately taking claritin every day in order to stave off the horrible, horrible allergy attacks that leave me sneezing and itching and attempting to gouge my eyes out with my fists. I have no idea why I’m suddenly so allergic to things. And I have no idea to what I am suddenly so allergic. Perhaps the level of grime-related allergens in my house has finally reached the tipping point? Regardless, is it okay to take allergy medication every day? I’m okay with doing so if I need to because damn, the alternative is not pleasant (although I sure as hell wish the pills were cheaper), but I don’t want to be destroying my liver or stomach lining or lung hairs or whatever.

Today I scrounged among last spring’s outgrown jackets to find something with which to hold over my five year old until we can make it to our consignment shop this weekend in order to get him a real coat.

Fall, it just snuck up on me! We had such a cold summer that I keep expecting a long warm fall. A week or so ago it was warm and lovely and so I figured I was correct in my expectation, and now that it’s cold and windy and rainy I’m in denial, waiting for my sunny days to come back. And as a result, I send my son to school with no coat, regardless of the weather. Rain clouds? Nah, that’s just morning fog that will burn off by noon! Pouring rain? Nah, it’s just sprinkling, it’ll quit any minute! Wind strong enough to knock over our garbage can? No, that’s probably just the tail wind from a truck driving by!

My eyes were not opened until today, when he came home wearing a jacket belonging to a girl in his class who told him he could wear it as long as he needed. My brain is now full of terrible images of my skinny little five year old huddled and shivering on the playground until his benevolent classmate rescued him with her wooly pink zippered sweatshirt.

So tomorrow he will wear his linty, too short, too tight fleece jacket and Saturday we head to the consignment store.

Thus far I’ve been pretty pleased with being able to get all my boys’ clothes (including shoes!) (but not including underwear — it’s amazing how much hand me down underwear we’ve gotten from parents who bought too soon and by the time potty training was done, they didn’t actually fit — of course, it doesn’t hurt that my kid has such a small butt that 2T-3T undies fit him just fine) from our consignment store, but I may have to give in with regard to pants for my five year old. I snatch up every pair that will ever fit him because they are few and far between as it is, but it seems that no parents are quite ready to give up pants that fit a five year old. Of course, if my five year old’s jeans collection is any indication, I can well believe that the pants have been long destroyed before ever turning vaguely in the direction of the consignment shop. I really need to learn how to patch knees.

I also took the opportunity of today’s enlightenment to poke through the box of waiting 3Ts in my closet to see if I could sufficiently clothe my two year old now that his tshirts are no longer appropriate and his clothes from last year are too short. Luckily for him, we’ve been given four jackets and one really nice, brand new coat, so starting tomorrow, he’ll be warm.

I guess this means I should sew the buttons back onto my own coat. I have noticed it’s been mighty chilly at the bus stop lately.

I’m so used to my two year old being a baby that is always surprises and amazes me to see signs of his little personality. For example, tonight I took my boys to a drive-in movie for the first time. Since 10pm is the point at which they both turn into gently snoring pumpkins, I was hoping that I might get to stay for the second movie but alas, the drive-in experience was entirely too exciting and the second movie was entirely too violent, so we cut out before the opening credits rolled.

Although my chatty five year old kept up a steady stream of conversation during the twenty minute drive home (about death of all things — when he and his brother are going to die, when I’m going to die, whether we can be buried next to each other, what it will be like to be buried, whether we will have another life, whether dead spiders have another life, why our bodies can’t live forever, whether someone can put us back together once we are buried and turn into dirt), I thought for sure that my two year old would fall asleep. He’s pretty committed to his sleep schedule and a car ride, morbid conversation filled or no, is usually just the ticket.

Sure enough, when we arrived home he was deeply asleep. I whispered to his brother to tiptoe into the house and I ran to unlock the door so that I could smoothly transition him into bed. As I walked back to the car and peered inside at his little sleeping body he suddenly let out a giggle, quickly covered his face with his arms, and then dropped his arms and made his face relax. With a shock I realized that he was tricking me! He was pretending to be asleep! He was playing a little joke on me!!

This isn’t the first time this has happened, but it’s the first time where it was so drawn out and so premeditated and so unexpected, precisely because I was really expecting him to be asleep.

I love that he was playing a little trick on me!

I remember when he was newly born and his brother was three and I was so immersed in how much easier three was than zero. I looked forward, somewhat desperately, to the days when he’d be three. It seemed an almost intolerably long wait, but here we are, a mere six months away, and already his little-boyness is shocking to me. I love the way he counts things (”One [unintelligible] seben, eight, ine, hen!”), the way he always asks when I wake up in the morning, “Mom, you wake up from nap?,” the way he calls to me from the bedroom and when I come to look for him he’s hiding and giggling under the covers.

I am so in love with this little two year old of mine.

Ever since I had strep throat a couple weeks back the insomnia that had been plaguing me for months has disappeared. And let me tell you, it is glorious to lay down and actually fall asleep and not only fall asleep but stay asleep.

Until tonight, that is. Tonight I have too much on my brain so despite the fact that I am plenty tired and yawning big enough to split my head in two, here I sit, not sleeping.

I blame most of it on the meeting I attended at my five year old’s school this evening. The meeting was about No Child Left Behind and how my son’s school is considered a failing school (or whatever) and has reached stage four of failure, which means that the school needs to be “reorganized” and has a year to come up with a plan for reorganization.

It’s quite dramatic, this reorganization business, and it seems surprising to me that people aren’t more concerned about the fact that the reorganization choices are something like a) replace the entire staff, b) dissolve the school, or c) let the school be taken over by some company with a track record for “educational success.” But indeed, everyone wants to talk about it, but no one seems to think that something drastic is actually going to happen.

This school isn’t the only school in our district that is “in reorganization” and while I’d say that any judgment against a school that is based entirely on standardized test scores that have a long history of racial and socioeconomic bias is highly suspect, I think the judgment against my son’s school is more highly suspect than most because a significant number of the families attending the school opt out of the testing and are thus awarded scores of 0 that drag down the other test scores. When you look at the test scores without the 0s from non-participating students, the scores are actually higher than the district average and certainly not scores that warrant reorganization. But the law (or policy or regulation or whatever) is the law (or policy, etc.).

I feel worried about this little school I’ve chosen for my sons. Over the past five years they’ve seen enrollment dwindle and this year they are at a historic low. A school meant for 270 students currently holds 198. My son’s kindergarten has 18 kids in a part of town where all other kindergartens are bursting at the seems with 27 to 30 kids. Part of the problem is the No Child Left Behind business and the resulting bad press, but part of the problem is also that the school does not know how to sell itself. Of all the alternative schools I visited when I choosing schools, their tour and materials (hell, I don’t think they even had materials) and responsiveness was the worst. Their website is atrocious. I was biased significantly in favor of the school because it fit my education philosophy and ideals, but my experiences during the enrollment process and my attempts to communicate and interact with the school made me seriously doubt my choice to the point that I started telling myself that it was just kindergarten, I could just ride out the year and then we could find someplace else. If I, someone who was so very determined to choose this school, was turned off to the point of almost going elsewhere, I can only imagine how many families didn’t bother to persist this far.

At the meeting there were several parents of 8th graders who had a lot of complaints to offer about the school, complaints that only affirmed my fears about what it means to go to a school of this type, how I’m going to be dealing with eight more years of disorganization, lack of communication, and the need to be assertive and even aggressive if I want to know what’s going on and keep informed. I wasn’t unaware of this possibility coming in. I’ve been in enough alternative hippy settings of one kind or another to know that you often trade organization and attention to day-to-day minutiae for ideals and big-picture philosophy. But again, there are plenty of parents (and have been plenty of parents given the dwindling numbers) who won’t be as tolerant as I am prepared to be.

The ideals and values of this school are important to me and I want this school to be all that it can be so that my boys can have an awesome educational experience there. But this meeting left me feeling concerned about the future.

This stuff, in an of itself, isn’t enough to keep me awake. What’s keeping me awake is thinking about what I can do to help. Will they let me redesign their website? Would the teachers be willing to consider classroom blogs where either they or the students could post updates and notes and interesting stories so that parents could read them and feel more in the loop? Someone needs to create a good welcome packet for interested families. Could the school create some focus groups to learn what drew families and what turned them off or made them hesitate when deciding to choose this school? Someone needs to create a more organized and more compelling school tour that involves the students and really shows off what the school has to offer. The students need to do public projects or get their work shown in public venues so that people can see the exciting work happening at the school. I can think of a million ways to sell the school but who the hell am I am except a random parent one week into nine years of education at this school.

The school has a great philosophy. No grades, no grade levels, mixed age classrooms, collaborative and experiential learning, a focus on relationships and fairness and social justice. It’s definitely not the school that’s right for everyone, but I feel strongly that it’s right for my family and clearly there are other families who feel the same. It just kills me to think that some families, for whom this school might also be a good fit, and getting lost for stupid, unnecessary reasons, and even worse, that this school might eventually close because of that.

Can I confess that I find it just a little bit surprising that neither my five year old’s kindergarten teacher nor his gymnastics coach have contacted me to exclaim over his gifted brilliant genius? Or at the very least his supreme adorableness.

Right now he’s sitting in front of me filling up the “books” I’ve made him (by stapling cut sheets of paper together) with various items. One book (entitled, “FLAWRS”) has one brightly colored flower on each page. One book (entitled, “DOLRS”) has pictures of various dollar bills (as well as the bald bad guys — bald means bad guys, didn’t you know that — who are trying to take our money away from us). One book (”SHAPES”) has a different shape on each page. One book (”RAINBO”) has a rainbow on each page. And the grand finale is “LEDRS” that contains not only the alphabet, but the highly phonetic version of “next time won’t you sing with me.”

Genius!!!

Today I was late to work, hours late to work, because I couldn’t get my car started. Minutes before I had driven my two year old to daycare and then my five year old to his bus stop but as soon as the bus came and I ran back to my car to try to get to work only five minutes late instead of my usual ten, it wouldn’t start.

One AAA battery guy, one tow truck driver, one mocha frappaccino, and two hours at Car Toys later, it turned out to be the stupid fucking alarm system on my car. I have had nothing but problems with this alarm system, the worst of which was an event at Urgent Care one day about a year ago when I stood in the pouring rain with my very sick boys trying endlessly to disarm my alarm with no luck. After a $50 cab ride to home and back, the system caved under the weight of my swearing and tears and once I had control again I shut off the alarm forever (I tried to actually rip it out of my car but it proved stronger than I).

Much to my surprise and consternation, a couple days ago the alarm system decided to turn itself back on and commenced locking my car at unexpected times and arming and disarming itself at random intervals. And then this morning it decided to disable my starter (to prevent me from stealing my car) without actually arming the system (which meant I couldn’t disarm it and start my car). I thought it was my battery (since a dead battery and disabled starter give similar responses) but the battery guy said no (and did not sell me the battery I was more than willing to buy on the spot) and the tow truck guy confirmed it was not my starter (which was good since I had had my starter replaced about six months ago) and managed to get it started so that I could drive to Car Toys to have the finicky alarm system checked out (with dire warning to NOT turn off my car). The Car Toys guy insisted that it couldn’t possibly be my cheap aftermarket alarm system that was causing the problem (WRONG! Stupid preppy too-much-hair-gel earring boy!) but condescended to do my bidding anyway, and two hours later I was on my way to work, car starting on demand, wiry spider of the alarm system remains perched on the passenger seat next to me.

Unfortunately I don’t think that my boss believes me. This is the…third? time I’ve had car trouble in the past month or so and I think the excuse is wearing a little thin. If I could come up with a way to casually drag in the wiry carcass of the alarm system in order to prove my story, I’d do it.

My five year old is terribly reticent when it comes to sharing his day with me. I try everything I can think of to cajole information out of him but he thwarts me at every turn.

“What did you do today?”
Shrug. “I dunno.”

“Did you read any stories today?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh really? What was the story about?”
“I dunno.”

“What was something that happened today that made you laugh?”
“Um…I dunno.”

“What did you eat for lunch?”
“I don’t remember.”

The closest I can come to actual information is when we trade stories of our day. First I tell him about my day and then he tells me about his day. But even that goes something like, “First I got on my bus this morning, then I got to my school, then we played, then we had free choice, then we did something else, then I got on my bus, then you picked me up!” Makes me feel intimately connected to his day, let me tell you.

On Friday and again today he came home in strange pants because he had accidents at school but he can tell me no details other than that no one was mad at him and he just forgot to go potty.

This morning I opened his backpack to discover several pieces of artwork and a thick packet of papers I needed to sign that came home with him on Friday. Despite my repeated asking on Friday night, he told me about none of it and since his backpack usually carries absolutely nothing, I didn’t think to look inside of it.

I dearly want to email his teacher and ask her for a minute-by-minute description of every moment since he started school a rough outline of what a day in kindergarten looks like so that I can at least ask him pointed questions about his day but school started less than a week ago and I know she’s got to be busy and I don’t want to be one of those parents who emails three times a day and calls morning and night and sends endless updates about one last forgotten detail about their precious baby.

I wish I could at least drop him off or pick him up. I hate feeling so entirely disconnected and so unsure about how to connect myself.

I’m finally finished with all my coursework for the class in which I’m enrolled, now I just need to do my final project, which is to handcode a simple website for some useful purpose. I thought I had a decent idea for a site but now I’m entirely bored with that idea (which was not terribly useful and somewhat contrived to begin with) and so I’m going to start all over (which, since I hadn’t done any work on the other site, isn’t as much of a setback as you might think). But I was wondering whether any of you might have need for a simple website? I have no doubt that I’ll be able to whip out something that’s simple yet professional and pretty, but I’m just at a loss as to the content. So if any of you have been yearning for a simple website to display your hobby/artwork/bizarre collection/political manifesto send me an email or leave a comment and I’ll hook you up! (Oh, and I’d let you do as much of the design as you wanted to, but if you didn’t like it in the end, you could just scrap it, my feelings wouldn’t be hurt or anything…well, not much anyway).

I’m feeling some general anxiety, the source of which I can’t seem to pin down. Or actually, maybe I can pin it down, it’s just that it’s coming from a bunch of different sources and so it’s not easy for me to focus in on it and say, “Oh, that’s not so bad, that will be resolved after [blah] and I can relax then.”

- I’m trying to avoid enrolling my son in a before school program because it will cost me $250 a month for about fifteen minutes a day (the time between when I need to leave in order to get to work on time and when his bus comes) but the best I can arrange means that I will be 10-15 minutes late to work every day. Do I pretend that I’m arriving on time and worry endlessly about getting “caught?” Do I try to arrange this slightly odd schedule with my boss by offering to work a little later in the evenings and risk that taking up all his variable schedule goodwill and thereby not allowing me to take a half day off every other week so that I can volunteer in my son’s classroom?

- I just sent in renewal paperwork but I’m afraid that now that my childcare costs are less, my net income (income minus what I pay for childcare) will result in my boys no longer qualifying for medicaid, which means that I have to choose between paying $800 a month for their benefits or having them go without (their dad has already made it very clear that he will not pay any part of their benefits). Although my childcare costs are less, they are definitely not $800 less.

- My boss officially leaves in three months and the opening for his position should be announced any day. Do I talk to him about the job? Do I apply? Do I want the job either way? Would I look like an ass if I applied? Do I need the stress of applying? Do I need the stress of the job? How much does the fact that it starts at $25k more than what I make now play into my decision?

- Was it just me or did the center I visited yesterday with my two year old seem kind of cold and unloving toward the children? Am I just projecting my own anxiety onto them? Is it the wrong choice to send my two year old there, even if just for two days a week? He’s going to be upset about it for sure, is it worth disrupting his little life? Even if means I might be able to save money on overall daycare costs eventually?

- How am I going to get caught up on my school stuff? I have one month left and have been almost entirely unable to do any work for the past week. I did a timeline for my final project and I’m woefully behind on it, not to mention the regular work. I’m supposed to go camping this weekend as one last summertime hurrah, but that’s the only time I have for school work. I can’t possibly cancel on camping for the third week in a row, can I?

- Why is my house never clean? Why is my house not only never clean, but so much less clean that it used to ever be?

This morning I took my five year old to kindergarten for the first time. He and I are both so used to his being dropped off somewhere that it was no big deal. We walked around his classroom and admired the toys and talked about what might happen in various spaces and then he settled down to play with some blocks and I hugged and kissed him and left.

Not so much for other parents though. Some kids clung desperately to their parents’ legs and some parents looked grimly determined to stay the entire day.

There are 18 kids in my son’s class, a number that is much better than the 22-25 average in our school district for elementary school. The kids sit at tiny little tables with tiny little chairs and the classroom is big and open with lots of different zones and play areas and things to look at. One thing I really like it that the classroom looks lived in and learned in. Everything is not sparkling new with no sign of children ever having been present.

Yesterday at gymnastics two dads sitting behind me were talking about visiting schools in preparation for kindergarten and one mentioned a school I had toured and how he didn’t like it because the building was old and the classrooms were so cluttered. Instead, he found another school where everything was clean and orderly and new. I thought it was interesting to hear the criteria that different parents use to judge a school. Me, I cared much less about the classrooms than I did the pedagogy, but all pedagogies being equal, I like a full, messy, busy classroom. When we came for the picnic last week we walked through a grade 1-3 classroom and it was truly packed with stuff. There were lots of different learning areas but all the other empty spaces were completely bursting with materials: toys, blocks, building materials, clocks, art supplies, marbles, colored paper, pens and markers, games, puzzles, maps, rulers, science equipment, books, a fish tank, globes, dinosaurs, a million different things. To me, it felt like a room full of ideas, full of potential and full of inspiration. My five year old’s kindergarten class is not quite as full, but it still has that same feeling to me, that feeling of learning and of creativity and of exploration.

I’m looking forward to hearing his report on the first day.

After the drop off, my two year old and I went to tour a daycare/preschool he’s likely to start attending soon. It was a nice little center with small classes and a progressive philosophy and a young, hipster-ish staff. If my two year old goes, he’d start off at two days a week and gradually transition up to five as space becomes available.

I must say that I feel really unsure about whether I should enroll him. On the one hand I definitely like the idea of him spending his time away from me in a more structured environment than what he currently has. He currently stays at a private home during the day where he does nothing but play, watch tv, and be shuttled around as the woman who watches him drives her kids to various appointments. I don’t feel like the care she gives him is bad (hell, it’s much like what he would get at home if I were home during the day, I’d imagine — except less tv), but I like the idea that if he’s going to be away from me, he could at least be in an environment where he’s learning and having his development supported (while still getting plenty of time to play). His brother was this same age when he started daycare/preschool and overall I think he benefited significantly from the experience.

But at the same time, unlike his brother, my two year old does not run out into the world with arms flung open. He’s much more of a hanger-backer. He’s much more shy and reserved and hesitant. He clings to me much, much more than his brother ever did. He started going to the place where he goes during the day when he was nine months old and has gone there ever since. I realized with a start a couple weeks ago that he probably thinks of the woman who watches him and her kids and just another part of his family, the daytime part. And now I want to tear him away from that security, from that environment he’s known for surely as far back as he can remember? Maybe it’s not worth it. Maybe it’s better for him to stay with what he knows and not go to this center. Maybe the kind of environment provided by the center is irrelevant and it’s better for him to stay where he’s already loved, even if he watches too much tv while he’s there.

I don’t know. I don’t know and I feel a little ill contemplating the whole mess.